... [a] sprawling, grim novel about our society’s violent inability to deal with difference ... While most of the novel is spent in a few characters’ heads, Proehl acquaints us with the names, abilities and eventual fates of a panoply of secondary cast members. It makes for a bewildering read: both a valiant attempt to delineate an entire society and an unwieldy narrative where depth gets lost in the description of yet another character’s appearance or opinions or quickly sketched back story. I felt a little like one Resonant who discovers he has eyes all over his body and must shut them against a flood of sheer surface detail.
... factional fighting all the way, as well as politics, and legal issues to be played out in courtroom drama ... Mr. Proehl tests all the options, and embodies them in characters across the whole range not only of abilities, but also of self-control. There are no easy answers, but one question never quite comes into focus. Has anyone got a theory about how ESP works? Time was, that was a big issue in sci-fi. But we have moved, it seems, into a more skeptical age.
Much like the X-Men comics, Proehl masterfully uses science fiction as a lens to examine social inequality and human evil; readers will find it hard to believe that they’re not actually looking into the near future.
Someone really needs to introduce Proehl to the concept of fan fiction, as all his books to date fall firmly into that realm...This second novel, is, well, an X-Men AU—or alternate universe fanfic—which asks: What if the X-Men was literary fiction? Names and details are altered again, but the story is one most readers will know—and one that Proehl must already know himself ... At nearly 500 pages in length, the story suffocates any action with burdensome, put-on prose, culminating in a not-very-satisfying climax and ending. Indeed, at times the entire book feels as if it’s been run through a writing residency algorithm ... Readers should seek out less pretentious and more original X-Men fanfic online instead.
A host of varied characters grapple with alienation and bigotry in this complex novel ... What distinguishes this effort by Proehl...from myriad other takes on this age-old trope is the book’s sharp, even uncomfortable awareness of the ways in which factors such as race, religion, and queerness would complicate and compound the bigotry such individuals face. The story is set in present-day New York and doesn’t shy from confronting the burgeoning trends of domestic terrorism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of prejudice. The characters are intricately human, each rendered in minute and thoughtful detail that pushes back against stereotypes. Though the teetering tower of subplots and POV characters sometimes crashes into confusion, the book builds effectively to a brutally realistic, deeply tense, and worrying climax and leaves the reader eagerly awaiting the next installment.
